A Discussion About Love

Joe fidgeted uncomfortably in the easy chair and took another sip from the bourbon and Coke I had prepared for him. "There's something I want to talk with you about, Demetri."

I nodded and settled into my chair opposite him.

Joe glanced around my study. His eyes rested for a minute on the Leonardo da Vinci print, and he stared at the naked baby Jesus sitting in his mother's lap. "It's a bit difficult."

"I'm a priest," I said. "You aren't likely to tell me anything I haven't heard."

He smiled. "I guess you hear all kinds of things in the confessional."

"Is what you want to talk about like a confession?"

"You might think of it that way. If I told you some things maybe you could treat it like a confession — you know, with confidentiality and everything."

"A confession is when somebody confesses. If the devil himself came and confessed to me his plans for the overthrow of heaven, I would feel honor bound to hold it in confidence."

"Even if he were a Protestant?" Joe asked.

I laughed. "Well, that might throw a different light on the subject."

Joe fell silent. I allowed the silence to continue for a minute, and then tried to encourage him. "As your friend, and if you like, as your priest, I can listen."

"I had a dream, about some boys, Demetri. They were in bed with me — a dark one and a light one. They played with me." He paused. "Sexually, I mean." He studied my face. I smiled and nodded, hoping to convey simply an open receptivity. He continued. "One of them said, `we can help you Joe'." He waited as though he had asked a question and was expecting an answer.

"You are worried, then, about this dream?" I asked.

"It's confusing to me."

"Of course. Yet it's only a dream. If they put us in prison for our dreams there would hardly be anybody on the outside."

Joe sat forward in his chair. "Yes. What I told you is only a dream. But what I am concerned with is more than dreams."

"Yes?"

"Sometimes when I'm camping with boys I let them skinny-dip."

"That's hardly a sin."

"I find them very beautiful."

"I'm sure they are."

"Sometimes I feel … aroused."

I shrugged. "Feelings aren't sins either."

Joe may have felt that I wasn't understanding. "These feelings are at least partly … sexual." This last word, uttered with a certain disdain, stood in isolation, as though Joe were trying to distance himself from it.

"And that doesn't seem right to you," I said.

"It feels … very good in one way … even innocent …"

"Very good in one way," I repeated. "And yet …?"

"And yet I think these feelings must be abnormal. I'd never thought of myself as homosexual, or as a pedophile, but I don't know what to make of what's happening. Maybe it's some sort of crazy reaction to my separation."

I interrupted with a wave of my hand. "Feelings are feelings. What's to be gained by attaching harsh labels to them?"

"But I need to understand …" Joe persisted.

"Understanding and labeling are two different things. We can talk about that. But first let me ask you something you may or may not wish to answer." I was afraid of offending him, of course, but it seemed to me that there was something more than dreams and feelings bothering him. And I felt if I were going to help, I needed the whole story.

"Ask," he said.

"Have these feelings ever led you to do something you felt ashamed of — something that seemed wrong?"

Joe slumped in his chair, and took another sip of his drink. This time, I decided to wait.

"Once," he said finally.

"Do you want to talk about it?"

He did — and he didn't. However, his need to talk the thing out, and to make some sense of his experience, proved to be the stronger side of his ambivalence, so he set aside his embarrassment and told me in some detail exactly what had happened during his camping trip with Artemio and Michael. Driven in part by his guilt and his need for punishment he took pains not to spare himself by skimming over the embarrassing details.

When he was finished, I was slow to break the silence. "Is that all?" I asked finally.

"Isn't it enough?"

I shrugged. "I could use another drink," I said. "And you?"

He nodded, and I took time out to refresh our drinks.

"Socrates tells us that Eros is halfway between human and divine," I said as I settled back into my chair, fortified with a bit of Jack Daniels and Coke.

Joe stared at me blankly. "Does that connect?"

I smiled. "Be patient. You'll see the connection in a minute. Socrates says Eros is the desire for the Good, for beauty, for the immortal — for God, if you will. Some would say it's the desire to become God, or to return to God. Others would have it that Eros is the very word of God placed within our souls, urging us to seek or to become new expressions of His Love."

Joe waved me to a stop. "You're going to fast," he said. "I'm not sure I follow all this."

"Sorry," I said.

"I'm interested. Just slow down."

I laughed. "Okay. Back to Socrates. Eros is the desire for the Divine Good. If Eros had that which it desired, it would already be divine. Being the desire for something that is absent, however, it is less than complete, and therefore less than divine. Yet it draws us out of ourselves and directs us toward that which is divine. Therefore it is more than human. In the Symposium he calls it a `demon', or as it might better be translated, a ‘spirit'."

"I've heard of the Symposium, but never read it." Joe said.

I nodded. "It may be Plato's most entertaining dialogue. The setting is a drinking party in ancient Athens. The dialogue takes the form of a conversation about the nature of love. For the most part the kind of love they're talking about is love between a man and a boy. I guess that makes it particularly relevant right now, but I think the same idea would apply to any kind of love."

"He's talking about sexual love, then?"

"Yes and no. Certainly what we would think of as sexual energy is an aspect of this. The experience he's talking about is one of being ‘in love', however, and not just a state of sexual arousal that happens to find an object. Eros manifests itself in the world as a state of being-in-love-with-another. When it becomes simply sexual desire seeking discharge on any other who can be found, something has already gone wrong."

"So is he saying that love between men and boys is a good thing?"

"That depends. In Phaedrus he says that whether love between men and boys leads both parties to something higher, or tends to drag them both down, depends on the kind of discipline and control that's exercised."

"You're talking about whether the two actually engage in some kind of sex, I take it."

"That oversimplifies it. One would have to look at the whole relationship. In general, Socrates clearly feels that a love relationship that's never permitted to be expressed in an explicitly sexual manner is the most direct and effective route to heavenly bliss. However, he goes on to say that if sometimes the lover and the beloved allow their feelings physical expression, but the relationship is mainly about higher and more noble things, it's still helpful to both. But if the relationship is based purely on seeking sexual pleasure it's destructive to both."

"Supposing Socrates is right, where does that leave me?"

"You're asking what this says about your relationship with Artemio?"

"Yes."

"What do you think?"

"I don't know. This is all new to me."

"Do you love Artemio?"

His eyes grew wide and he looked at me as though I had said something astonishing. He paused. Then he said "Yes. I really do. I think … I think I'm in love with Artemio." He would probably never have put it this way without my prompting, but I was sure that those words, more than any others, would accurately name and clarify his experience.

"Does that feel okay to you?"

"Not really. Well, yes … and … no."

"How ‘yes' and ‘no'?"

"Loving him feels good. It feels like something new and good growing in me. It feels alive.

Yet the sexual thing …"

"What sexual ‘thing'?"

"The sexual feelings … you know."

"They aren't okay?"

"No."

"Why not?"

"They aren't … normal."

"Normal?"

"You know. It means I'm a pedophile."

"No, I don't know. It sounds like you're calling yourself names again rather than trying to understand. I really don't know what normal is."

"Well, okay. So we could get into a big philosophical conversation about what that word means, but almost everybody thinks that doing sexual things to boys is no good."

"Doing sexual things, and having feelings are not the same."

"You're saying that it's okay to have dirty thoughts and feelings if you don't act them out."

"No, I am not saying that. You're saying that. The people you're afraid of are saying that, and worse. They're saying that it's sick, or evil, or perverse, just to have the feelings. And to ever act on those feelings makes you an unspeakable creep."

"If you aren't saying that, what are you saying?"

"That the love you feel for Artemio, even the part that feels sexual, is good. One could even call it ‘wholesome'. It's potentially the most creative and healing energy in your life right now, and in Artemio's life."

"And what about what I did?"

"The sexual thing?" I said, mimicking the disdainful manner in which he had previously uttered this phrase.

He allowed himself a faint smile. "Yes, the sexual thing."

"In my mind we're into a gray area here. All things considered, though, letting it become explicitly sexual will tend to create problems."

"So what do I do now?"

"You need to stop hating yourself, for starters."

"But what if I've damaged him?"

"Don't be silly."

"But that's what everybody seems to think."

"Your relationship is helpful to him."

"Yet the actual sex is not."

"I'm not certain about that. I think Socrates may have been wrong on this one point."

"Which is?"

"The issue of whether a love relationship between a man and a boy leads to higher things may not depend, as Socrates would have it, mainly on whether it's expressed sexually. Socrates had an unfortunate prejudice against physical life."

"On what then would it depend?"

"On whether the man puts the child's needs first, I think. Whether or not there's anything intrinsically wrong with such a relationship becoming overtly sexual is a difficult point. But it may be academic. In our society it creates problems for everybody."

For some minutes neither spoke. Finally Joe asked, "Don't priests give people penance when they've sinned?"

"I'm not sure you have sinned."

"I feel like I have."

"You want penance, then."

"Isn't it what should happen?"

"Okay. Let me think." I had to do some quick consultation with my own inner ‘demon' about his request. Shortly an answer came that satisfied me. "Did you ever read The Little Prince," I asked. Joe nodded. "Do you remember where the fox tells the Little Prince that you have responsibility for what you have tamed?"

"Yes."

"Well, you have tamed Artemio."

"Yes. I guess you could put it that way."

"So your penance is to assume responsibility for him."

"How do you mean?"

"Think about what Artemio needs, and stop worrying so much about your own purity. That will take care of itself."

"What do you think Artemio needs?"

"He needs a man who will love him for one thing."

"I can see that."

"If you let yourself be that man, you'll be able to see what his other needs are."